Washington is once again showing Beijing the red line not to cross to help Moscow. US President Joe Biden says he has warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of the risk of investors fleeing if China violates the sanctions imposed on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine.
In an excerpt from an interview with CBS to be broadcast on Sunday, Joe Biden said he explained to Xi Jinping, during a telephone interview, that violating the sanctions would be “a gigantic mistake”, specifying that there was no no indication yet that China actively supported the Russian war effort by supplying it with weapons.
A call “not at all to threaten”
“I called President Xi – not at all to threaten, just to tell him (…) that if you think the Americans and others are going to continue to invest in China while you are violating the sanctions imposed on Russia, I believe you are making a gigantic mistake,” the White House tenant said. But “at the moment there is no indication that they (the Chinese) have offered arms or other things that Russia needs”.
Joe Biden also dismissed the idea that the alliance between China and Russia implies that the United States is waging a new kind of cold war. “I don’t believe this is a new or more complicated Cold War,” he said.